Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(191)

Then a tight grip at the mail over her chest, an agonizing yank, and she was free on the surface, gagging and coughing, lying on her side. Someone stood over her, his gaze watchful: Cowl.

He helped her clamber to her feet. She stood swaying, unsteady, as the ground felt like the deck of a ship. ‘Thank you,’ she managed, spitting out dirt.

‘You will not thank me. You, above all, I want to make it. I want you there to see what he has done to us. I want you to see it.’

‘Who has done what?’

The mage retreated down the slope. ‘I know already. It is for you to discover. Then I want you to face him! Now go.’

‘Cowl!’ she yelled after him, but he was gone.

The very ground groaned and vibrated beneath her feet. She dashed up the rocks, pushing against the loose debris as it came sloughing down the entire valley slope to either side.

She made the crest of fresh steaming earth, and stopped, utterly amazed. A dry frigid wind battered her as she stared at a wide wall of dirty glacial ice that stretched from side to side across the entire high mountain vale before her. Far ahead, tiny figures, no larger than ants, struggled up the first of the leading lobes of dirty ice. Nearer, two figures ran towards her, stopping now and waving.

She waved back. And she might have been imagining it, but it seemed to her that the entire gargantuan frozen river itself, a very mountain of ice, was moving.





CHAPTER XIV



THEY KEPT TO the forest as they fled upland, though as they climbed higher the woods thinned. Spruce now predominated, and those thin and scraggly. Fisher and Jethiss stayed with Kyle, while the remaining Crimson Guard spread out about them. No one had formally set out the marching order. Kyle wondered whether it was to protect him – he who least needed protection. Stalker and Badlands ranged widely, sometimes scouting ahead, other times keeping an eye on the rear.

At least they travelled through the constant cover of the dense clouds that hugged these high slopes of the Salt range. Eventually, during the morning – if he judged aright the diffuse yellow glow of the sky – Cal-Brinn called a halt and they collapsed where they stopped to lie panting, sucking in great shuddering breaths of the frigid air. Water skins made the rounds.

The Crimson Guard captain came to where Kyle, Fisher and Jethiss sat leaning against the backrest of a toppled fir. ‘Sleep,’ he told them. ‘We will keep watch.’ He moved on. Kyle did not argue, and neither did his companions. They rolled themselves into whatever cloaks or blankets they had managed to salvage or pack. In Kyle’s case, it was an untanned bear hide he’d rolled and roped over his back before the fight. He lay down and his thoughts went to the lowlands, to the shores of the Sea of Gold. What was happening there? Were Lyan and Dorinn safe? Of course she might not even be there – she might have accompanied the army north. But somehow he did not think so; these Lether officers and soldiers were claiming the north for themselves. To them, she and her Genabackans were outsiders. Perhaps even a threat.

Some time later he was woken by the poke of a spear-butt and he sat up, shivering, bleary and coughing. The sun was a smoky, silvery orb among the clouds. Tendrils of steam rose in wisps all about, and a clawing cold wind slithered down across them from the heights.

‘The weather is strange,’ he commented to Fisher.

The bard did not appear pleased; in fact, he had been in an uncharacteristically grim mood since they fled the Greathall. ‘It is no weather,’ he replied.

By now Kyle was accustomed to having to draw information from this man the way one must shake coins from a miser. A strange manner for a bard. ‘Then what is it?’

Fisher drew a hard breath as if he would rather not say, but then he allowed: ‘It is power coiling and tensing. Preparing itself for an unleashing. An invocation of Omtose.’

Kyle noted Jethiss paying close attention. ‘What will come?’ the Andii asked.

‘I do not know for certain what form it will take,’ Fisher admitted. ‘But I fear the worst it might.’

Stalker and Badlands emerged from the dense fogs. ‘They are with us still,’ Badlands announced.

When he was younger, Kyle might have expressed his confusion: they’d pushed them out – the Holding was theirs. Why pursue? But he was older now, hard truths of the world had been beaten into him, and so he merely shook his head at the inevitability of it. Of course they were coming. What else would they do? To ensure their grip on the land these new rulers had to eliminate all last vestiges of any prior claim. Any survivors would be a potential menace: they might raid, or form alliances and return some day to try to reclaim their ancestral holdings. In this Marshal Teal had no choice. Usurpers – claim-jumpers – had to be thorough.

Stalker stopped before Kyle. ‘Far enough north for you?’ he asked.

Kyle laughed. ‘Aye. Perhaps for them as well.’

The Iceblood’s hazel eyes held amusement. ‘Well, I’ve never been up much higher. No call for it. From here, though, we can descend into the Sayer or Heel Holding if we would. I only wish I knew the best route.’

‘Our line is good for now,’ said Fisher. He shook out his cloak. ‘Straight on.’

Everyone eyed the bard as he clipped the cloak tightly about his shoulders. Stalker studied the man as he drew his thumb and forefinger down his long moustache, smoothing it. Fisher, for his part, said no more.